Indigo Hill: A Novel

by Liz Rosenberg

  They stepped out together into cool, clear air. August in New England was already hungering for fall. The sumac trees blushed bright red, and at night the temperature dropped like a rock the minute the sun went down. But it was still light out—they always ate their feasts early, to get the Early Bird special and beat the crowds. They might not all actually be ancient yet, but they ate surrounded by the old folks in Worcester.

  Louisa and Art walked out into a bright-blue New England afternoon, the sky the color of her late mother’s eyes. Louisa wished her mother could have been there to see the beautiful day. Alma Johansson had so loved this time of year—she jokingly called it Augtember, and claimed it was her favorite month. She was grateful for it, every single year. “Thanking you!” That was the way her mother got off the phone, calling the words in a singsong. When you lost your mother, no matter how old you were, or how prepared, you felt like an orphan.

  Art spotted a bench under some maple trees and headed toward it. He had always walked ahead. Louisa followed. This too was familiar, but not in a comforting way. They both took a seat. He just sat there for a minute, his hands hanging down clasped between his knees. He didn’t say anything.

  “What’s up?” said Louisa.

  Art sighed and shook his head.

  Louisa watched little black ants crawling around on the pavement. They always looked so aimless to her, aimlessly busy, like Boston commuters.

  “What’s going on?” she asked after another long silence.

  “We made a big mistake,” said Art. “I’m telling you, I really think we did.”

  “Hmm.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the ants, still scurrying around. “You mean,” she said, trying to choose her words carefully, “that we made a mistake breaking up? Or, getting married in the first place?”

  He pursed his lips in exasperation. It was an expression she suddenly remembered clearly, and didn’t much like. “I mean the separation of course.” He articulated each word clearly.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Louisa.

  “Well, I do,” he said in his stubborn voice. Art had always been good at grinding her down. That’s why he always won more battles than he lost. “I know I miss you.”

  “I miss you too,” she said, and added, “—but I don’t think that means we made a mistake here, Art. We’ve been together a long time.”

  “Twenty-six years,” he said. “Come this December.”

  “That’s a long time.” She tried to keep her voice noncommittal.

  “I don’t think we should throw all that away, Louisa.” He didn’t just look thinner, she realized. He looked older, too, the lines around his mouth more pronounced. He also looked—she didn’t know, was there an expression for this?—he looked gayer. He was wearing a light-colored striped shirt, orange and pale blue, with a pale-purple stripe running through it, and new leather loafers. But really, she had no idea how gay people looked. Only on TV. His gestures seemed to her more effeminate, his voice sounded higher. But maybe he’d always looked and talked like that. She thought about all the nights they’d lain together in bed, not talking, not even touching hands. And other nights, kissing each other politely on the mouth, quickly, before heading off into separate rooms. She had no idea what Art remembered, if he remembered everything differently.

  “I think you’re just scared,” she said.

  He scowled at her. His eyebrows drew together. “Why should I be scared?” he said. It was his I-am-correct voice. But with a tremor underneath it. “No I’m not. You’re wrong. Just listen . . . I simply don’t want us to do something—foolish.”

  She turned sideways, and forced her eyes from the scurrying ants so she could look straight at him. She had certainly loved this man once. She probably loved him still, if push came to shove. But not like a husband and wife love each other—not even the way she loved Flick, helplessly, hopelessly. “Why not?” she asked. “Why not go ahead and do something foolish?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

  “For that matter, why not be ridiculous?”

  “You chose me,” Art said. “That very first night. You came to me. At the shack on Indigo Hill. You asked me to leave with you.”

  “I know,” Louisa conceded in a quiet voice.

  “If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have probably died in that fire.” Art said it bitterly, as if she’d cheated him of something wonderful. “We never should have left Tommy Bell behind.”

  “I know that too,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything to add.

  “So why, Louisa?—I never did get it. Why’d you come after me in the first place?”

  “I don’t know,” she lied. “I just did. I was a stupid teenager. You were a teenager. Maybe we should give ourselves a break.” They fell silent again. She went back to staring at the little black ants crawling around.

  “I don’t know what to do with myself,” Art said. He sounded near tears. “I wander around that house alone, our house, and I just don’t know what to do next, or where to go.”

  “You could sell the house,” she said. “We never liked it all that much in the first place.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” said Art.

  “Take some cooking lessons,” Louisa said. “You always said you wanted to try your hand at gourmet cooking. Piano lessons, too—remember? Only you never could find the time. Why don’t you try some of the things you always wanted to do?”

  “I don’t want to do anything,” Art said, slumping down farther. “I don’t even want to go to work anymore.”

  “Maybe you should find another job,” Louisa went on, relentlessly. She knew she was sounding hard but she couldn’t seem to stop the words from tumbling out. “Find something you actually like to do. Nothing’s holding you back now.”

  “I don’t know what I like,” he said. He had a hangdog, helpless expression that Louisa knew only too well. Always, in the past, she’d rushed in to help. Only it never did help. He looked so disappointed now. That downturn of the mouth. He’d worn her down with it a hundred, maybe a thousand times, over the past twenty-six years.

  “Well, figure it out!” she snapped. She stood up, startling them both. Art was staring at her with his mouth half-open. She stood in front of him with her hands clenched into fists.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m honestly very sorry, but this is not my problem. You can do anything you want—you’re smart, you’re hardworking. You’re nice looking enough. You’re a capable human being. I’m sorry if you think I cheated you out of dying young. You’re going to have to find yourself another plan.” She picked her pocketbook up off the ground and threw it over her shoulder. It swung back hard and hit her in the ribs. “I saved your miserable life—now live it!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Here’s what she never let herself remember.

  It was a bitterly, brutally cold night. The wind blew into Louisa’s eyes, it seemed to crawl behind her eyelids, making them sting in the cold. Then the tears froze on her face, ruining her makeup, she was sure. And this was only the end of December. Winter had barely begun. The rest of the frigid season still lay ahead, raised like a sledgehammer, waiting to slam down with its full weight.

  Louisa had just turned eighteen, in late November. That didn’t amount to much—Massachusetts had recently raised the drinking age back up to twenty-one. So they still had to go on their “tap a Harry” runs: find some older sibling or neighbor who was willing to go out and buy them the booze. It wasn’t all that hard. Flick was a champion at finding Harrys. He could charm the birds out of the trees, the adults out of their cars, and the liquor bottles off the package store shelves.

  Louisa was set to go to college in Worcester the next year. She’d live at home. Most of her friends at Burncoat High were going to college too, but none of them planned to leave town. They had plenty of colleges to choose from, about ten of them right there in the city. She heard of kids applying to schools in other states. There was
always some genius who got into a school like Harvard or Yale, and then the principal and all the parents practically fell down dead over it and they wrote about it in the Worcester Telegram. Louisa had decided on Worcester State. Her parents could afford the tuition, and she would save a bundle by living right there in her attic bedroom on Ararat. She’d heard Flick talking about going to Assumption. As long as he was close by, she figured she could deal with anything. Flick had been extra friendly lately, even for him. He and a girl named Jackie had recently called it quits.

  Louisa and Flick had had English class together that fall—which Flick hated—so they sat together and Louisa loaned him her notes, and when he gave them back, they were scribbled over with his cartoon drawings and doodles and jokes. She saved those annotated notes in a shoebox she hid at the back of the top shelf in her hideaway attic closet. She’d have died if anyone ever found that old box of memorabilia. It contained everything she’d ever gotten from Flick; from a portrait of the two of them holding hands that he’d drawn in crayon in the second grade, to the most recent English class notes.

  She’d saved ticket stubs for concerts they’d been to together (not on a date, just as part of the larger Bridge gang) and receipts from lunches at the Abare Bar & Grill, where, it was rumored, half the workers behind the counter were ex-cons, and they weren’t just in there for writing bad checks, either. You complained about your meal, you might wind up at the bottom of Lake Quinsigamond in a pair of cement boots, Flick had warned her. She could never quite tell if he was kidding or not about that kind of stuff.

  She’d saved old tickets from movies they’d seen at the Showcase Cinemas and random notes he’d passed Louisa under the table in class. Nothing romantic. A note from fourth grade, in his jagged, little-kid script said only, “Waht’s for lunch?” Flick often got his letters jumbled. Some of his mistakes were a hoot. She had also kept a Bergstrom’s T-shirt he’d once loaned her and forgot to ask for it back, and a chewed-on yellow pencil that still bore his sharp tooth marks. Sometimes she fitted her mouth over it, tenderly, as if she were trying to play a tiny flute. She even kept a rubber band he’d once shot at her. Crazy stupid stuff. Stuff nobody in their right mind would ever keep.

  Louisa took her own sweet time picking out what to wear to the shack that night, the night of the party. Well, it wasn’t really even a party. Technically speaking, the Bridge gang didn’t throw parties—but at least it gave them all someplace warm to go. It was still the Christmas holidays, more or less, so she could wear her new holiday sweater without feeling stupid—but red would make her stand out, and Louisa didn’t want to stand out. She already stood several inches taller than most of her girlfriends, and a few inches taller than some of the high school boys. It made for some pretty awkward moments on the dance floor. Louisa felt gawky in high heels, like a puppet on strings, about to fold over any second—but then, when she wore flats she felt ugly and plain and not at all feminine. If she tried to compensate by putting on makeup, she went too far the other way, and ended up looking like a circus clown.

  Michelle, Louisa’s younger sister, offered to help Louisa get ready to go out that night. She was very big on being helpful. “I can make you look even more beautiful,” Michelle gushed. “We can bring out your wonderful dark eyes!”

  Michelle always looked feminine, and her makeup was subtle and perfect—her clear complexion glowed, her bright-blue eyes shone, and she had that long golden hair that all the boys went gaga over. Louisa was the family goose while Michelle the swan glided on by. And the worst part was, Michelle was not only prettier, she was smarter and nicer, too. Even Louisa’s dad, who had always been Louisa’s biggest fan, would shake his head these days, watching her baby sister and say, “That Michelle sure is something else.”

  For once in her life Louisa wanted to look special and pretty herself. Just for one night. So she let Michelle tie her hair up in a high ponytail fastened with a sweatband. Michelle applied purple eye shadow—“to bring out your hazel eyes” she explained—and more mascara than Louisa had ever used before. Michelle helped her pick out her outfit, too—complete with chunky boots, and Louisa’s new long winter coat with padded shoulders, a Christmas gift from her mom and dad. Michelle marched her big sister downstairs to show off her new look. Then of course when she was done, Michelle acted all sad and wistful that she had no place to go that night.

  “Just let me come, this once,” said Michelle. None of her own friends were doing anything fun, she said, and her best friend, Crystal, was away for the weekend skiing at Jiminy Peak. “I won’t be in the way,” Michelle promised.

  “Yes you will,” said Louisa bluntly.

  “I won’t, I won’t,” Michelle wheedled, her blue eyes wide. “I’m so bored.”

  “Ohhhh—why not take her along?” interceded their mother. She was doing the Telegram crossword puzzle in the paper, and with two pencils tucked, one behind each ear, she looked like some kind of crazy woodland creature, in her holiday vest with the pine-cone appliqués all over it.

  “Nobody else has to take their kid sister along,” Louisa complained, which wasn’t exactly true, and not quite a lie, either. None of her friends had a kid sister except for Jean-Marie, who was the eldest of ten, so that didn’t count. For some reason everybody in the Bridge gang seemed to have kid brothers.

  “Pretty please?” said Michelle. “You won’t even know I’m there. I’ll be quiet as a mouse. Honest!”

  “Let Louie be,” said her dad, but Louisa could tell he was disappointed in her. He gave her a quick glance before he turned back to his newspaper, flopping it over to read the business news.

  “I’ll take you next time,” Louisa promised. “No matter where I go. Pinkie promise.” She would have sworn to anything to get out of the house this one night unencumbered. —If only Michelle had a clue. This wasn’t just any ordinary night. It was special. What if this was the one night that Flick got drunk—not too drunk, but just drunk enough—to lean on her for a change, and lead Louisa into some remote corner, or outside, into the frosty air. Louisa wouldn’t even feel the cold, she thought, if Flick had his long arms around her. He’d even called her earlier that day to make sure she was going to be there at the shack on Indigo Hill.

  “You’re not going to stand me up, are you?” he teased.

  No, she wasn’t going to stand him up. Not Flick. Not tonight. She checked her face in the breezeway mirror before she left—her eyes looked bright, her cheeks glowed. “I promise I’ll take you with me next time, wherever I go,” Louisa told her Michelle, who was still hanging around all sad eyed by the door, and Louisa fled before anyone could say anything else.

  Except, the party was a bust almost from the start. For one thing, Jean-Marie got grounded at the last minute so Louisa had to climb the long hill toward the water tower alone, trudging up Indigo Hill in the dark and damp cold. Had there ever been fireflies here? Had there really been a summer? It didn’t seem possible. She almost wished she’d taken her kid sister along after all. Louisa hated going places alone. She wasn’t even sure where the shack was, exactly, or how to find it, so she wandered around on the snowy hill lost and freezing, her feet growing number by the minute, trying to find the old road that the water trucks used. By the time she located the right place, her nose was running, and she was sure her makeup was wrecked—and then, inside the shack, Flick was already standing in a corner with his hand flat against the wall, above the shoulder of one of the pretty Lundgren twins, smiling down at the girl like he was going to take a nibble out of her. Louisa had come too late, as usual. So she’d frozen her tail off and walked all that whole way in the snow for no good reason.

  It felt hot and airless, almost stifling inside the makeshift shack, after the cold air. The room felt soggy and smelled of cardboard. By the time she got there, the place was crowded, with barely any room to turn around. There was a big oil drum in the middle of the room that served as a makeshift stove, though it seemed mostly to be producing smoke. A few of
the younger kids had tagged along, like Nutter and Tommy Bell. They’d just gone into the high school that fall, but they were somebody’s neighbor (Nutter) or someone’s kid brother (Tommy Bell) so the gang let them stay. Tommy was the genius who had actually built the shack, nailed it together with discarded lumber from Sloane’s and pieces left behind on a nearby construction site. He’d even toggled together a set of stairs, so the shack had an upstairs and a down. The upstairs was basically just a crawl-space—no one but a little kid could have actually stood up in there, but still, it was quite an accomplishment.

  He’d rigged up the wood-burning stove in an old fifty-five-gallon oil drum. Tommy did lousy in all his academic classes at school, but he was some kind of mechanical genius when it came to building things and would probably end up making more money than the rest of them combined. Every time somebody new walked in, Tommy escorted them around, showing what he’d done, his dark eyes shiny with pride.

  That night, in a holiday spirit they’d all been drinking tequila. Tommy claimed he’d gotten a bottle as a Christmas gift from his folks, but no one believed that story. His folks didn’t earn enough to spare him a bottle of Pepsi. He must have tapped a Harry somehow. Even the word tequila made Louisa feel warmer and more sophisticated—it conjured up advertising posters of tanned blonde girls in bikinis drinking on a nice beach somewhere tropical. Someplace they’d all rather be. Not huddled altogether in a damp makeshift shack in Wormtown, Mass.

  Most of the gang were upstairs playing cards, or downstairs jawing or drinking tequila. Other guys from the Bridge gang came and went, and some of them stayed outside the whole time, but the only girls who showed up all night were Louisa and the Lundgren girls. They could have used Michelle there, just to even things out a little. It served her right, Louisa thought, for being so selfish and not letting her baby sister tag along. Nobody was going to do any dancing with just three girls in the room. Nobody was even playing any music so far. Somebody had brought a guitar but it just sat in a corner of the shack, untouched. Louisa had been counting on a dance to get things started with Flick.